The Deep Dish: Endurance in the Faith with Jen Wilkin and Nancy Guthrie

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Melissa Kruger
Welcome to a special live recording of The Deep Dish, a podcast from The Gospel Coalition, where we love having deep conversations about deep truths. I’m Melissa Krueger, and we are recording live at TGCW 26 I’m here with my cohorse, my cohorse – she does love horses, so it’s true. Is

Jen Wilkin
a horse,

Melissa Kruger
my co-host Courtney Doctor, and we are thrilled to be joined today by our good friends Jen Wilkin and Nancy Guthrie.

Courtney Doctor
And today we are going to be talking about endurance in the faith, by which we simply mean believing God, continuing to believe God from today until He calls you home, persevering in the faith, enduring in the faith. So I want to start by asking the three of you, before we start talking about endurance in the faith. I want to talk about some non-spiritual areas that you have had to learn or have endurance.

Jen Wilkin
No, I think Nancy should start, because she probably has a lot of areas where she’s disciplined.

Courtney Doctor
She is, she is the most disciplined of

Nancy Guthrie
us all. Yeah, well, honestly, the only thing I could think of is last year I set out on this writing project, was a big project, and I started in January working every day. I didn’t travel much, stayed home every day, and it was due october 1, and that deadline was always right there. And so, yeah, to accomplish it meant just every day 630 I’m hitting my desk and next

Courtney Doctor
January be looking for it because it’s coming out and it is going to be so good. What about you guys? See you

Nancy Guthrie
later.

Jen Wilkin
Yeah, I don’t think I’m a very enduring.. I’m not a very.. what do you have one? I bet you do. I’m stalling some more. Okay,

Speaker 1
what about

Courtney Doctor
that marathon you ran? Remember that time I ran that marathon that I

Jen Wilkin
never would..

Melissa Kruger
that was the only thing I could think of. Is I some some girlfriends came to me and they were like, we’re going to Kiowa and we’re going to run a half marathon and there’s one extra spot. Do you want to go? And so I said yes to Kiowa, not realizing that meant I had to run a half marathon. I was like, I need new friends that we just do this stuff for fun.

Nancy Guthrie
You found them right here.

Courtney Doctor
We will never ask you to run.

Melissa Kruger
So, what I realized, it was a really good experience, because I realized, oh, you know, you run a mile, and then the next day you run a little more, and then you finally get up to 13, and you actually do it.

Jen Wilkin
I will take your word.

Melissa Kruger
Yeah,

Jen Wilkin
well, the closest I’ve come to running a marathon really was writing the Revelation study. Yeah, that’s my only, it’s my only personal marathon thing I can, and candidly, the only thing I have discipline around is writing Bible studies, so that’s why it took me so long to come up with an answer, and that’s the only answer I have. But that one was like, you start out at the beginning and you’re like, gosh, not only do my learners not understand this book, I don’t understand this book, and then just fighting and fighting and fighting to get to enough clarity that you can take your little tiny bit of light and hand it to someone who maybe has less light than you do, but yeah, I just remember when I actually, I think you guys were there on the last day of the recording, and I thought I was just gonna sit down on the floor and ball, I mean, it was just that it finally was done. So that’s what we are

Courtney Doctor
all glad that you endured in that. Well,

Jen Wilkin
it’s the only marathon I’ll ever run. I promise you that.

Melissa Kruger
I actually think it’s a really good reminder that sometimes we think, oh, well, Jen’s just good at that. I mean, you know, we can look at people who endure in things and we think, well, they’re just naturally good at it. And I used to, I used to teach high school math, and I remember kids would be struggling, and they thought, because it was hard, yeah, they just should quit.

Jen Wilkin
Oh, yeah.

Melissa Kruger
And so I think that’s just such a good example of just because something’s hard doesn’t mean you quit. That’s actually exactly when you have to endure, yeah. You know, and so, okay, so let me ask you things. This Jen, this is for you. You’re first. What are some things that get in the way of endurance in the faith? You know, why is that? I mean, so not just endurance and other things, but endurance in the faith. Why is it actually hard to endure?

Jen Wilkin
Well, I think one of the reasons that it’s hard to endure is because God is invisible, and so we would prefer He not be. And so I think when you get into a test of endurance, so like if you’re thinking in terms of like a trial that you go through or something like that. One of the reasons that it’s so hard is because the trial is very visible and God persists in being invisible, and yet we’re told that the people who are blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe, and so a lot of what I think. The trials that test our endurance do is put that to the test, you know, they, they’re like, do do you do you believe in, in this God who is unseen, because you actually have a lot of evidence that He is faithful, like, but we strain our eyes forward in those moments, we want to know how it’s going to conclude, but really the impulse we should have to help us endure is to turn and look behind us at the faithfulness of God to all generations. He’s actually not invisible in the strictest sense, because he has made known what he is like, maybe not to you personally, but to the saints of old, and probably to someone that you know as well, and I think that’s one of the things that you know, probably getting ahead, but that’s one of the things that we turn to in times where we need to endure, is to someone who can say, I know you can get to the other side of this with your faith intact, because I’m bearing witness to it in my own life. Yeah,

Courtney Doctor
that is good. Nancy, twice in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says these words: the one who endures to the end will be saved. And then Luke records Jesus saying, in 2119 by your endurance you will gain your lives. So, what is Jesus talking about? I mean, does this mean like it’s all up to me to endure, and that I then gain this thing called life, because I’ve, because I’ve been so strong, or because I’ve endured so well.

Nancy Guthrie
Well, one thing about that is it’s, it’s two statements of fact, the one was it the one who endures to the end will be saved, and by your endurance you will gain your lives. So, I think when we hear that, the question then becomes, by what power will that happen? I think that’s what we’re getting at, right. And you ask the question, does it mean it’s up to me to endure, and so, yeah, we listen to this question, and when we say that the one who will endure the end will be saved, by what means will that happen? And my answer to that would be the means by which every one of us who is in Christ will endure is through the means of grace, and if you don’t know what I mean by that term, the means of grace, these are the means by which we experience the benefits of Christ, and one of the benefits of Christ is the fact that he’s promised to keep you,

Jen Wilkin
yeah,

Nancy Guthrie
but that, that come, that, how does his keeping happen? It happens through means, and the means of grace would include, you know, sitting under teaching and preaching, taking in the Lord’s supper, and baptism, prayer. and also the fellowship of believers, and so these are things we partake in. We, so we have a part of it. I think maybe one way we should think about perseverance is similar to how we think about sanctification, because we know the Holy Spirit sanctifies us, He sets us apart, but even when we hear that, we know that doesn’t mean that we have no part in that, right? We’ve got a part in putting sin to death and putting on the Lord Jesus Christ, which we’re instructed to do. I think a tricky thing about this question is basically we want to take the tension out of this, which we want to be all or nothings, we want it to be many things in the scriptures, isn’t it? Yeah, right. We want to say it’s got to either be that God’s going to do it or that I’m going to do it, and like so many other truths of the scripture, we accept what it says, which is, you know, the one we must endure to the end to be saved, or we might also, I think, flip that around to be saved. We must endure, but we also hold very tightly that we must. I’m teaching through First Peter at my church this summer, and the main message of First Peter comes at the very end when he says this is the true grace of God, stand firm, and so there’s a place for those that he’s talking to to stand firm, but that doesn’t mean it’s all up to them, right?

Courtney Doctor
And I think sometimes it’s even perspective, like while I’m going through it, I think I’m the one that I am barely holding on by a thread, and I am holding so tight, and I am clinging, and I am doing all these things, but you know, I think when we get to the other end of it, we’re gonna look back, and we’re gonna be like, oh, what are we saying? He will hold me fast, right? He held me fast the entire time. So, I think there’s even not only agency in both, but there’s there’s perspective that that we’re going to gain one day that we don’t have an. Know, I hope so,

Melissa Kruger
and I like when I don’t know the term means of grace. I always love thinking of it that way, because it means the creator who gives the grace made a way for the grace to come to us. So, I like to think about it like my cell phone, this little magical thing. It can do all these things, it can give me directions, it can tell me where to get dinner, it can do all these things, but if I do not plug it in, the designer of this phone made a way for it to receive power, and it is very

Nancy Guthrie
good,

Melissa Kruger
you know,

Courtney Doctor
so good at illustrations, she’s so good at illustrations,

Melissa Kruger
but it won’t work, and so God said, yeah, I made you, I saved you, and I’m gonna give you power, and here’s how you get it. And we’re like, oh, I don’t like that method,

Courtney Doctor
right? Well, you know what I thought, even while Nancy was naming the means of grace, two of them are happening here this week, we’re hearing teaching, and we’re having the fellowship of the saints, and so even like here together, like we’re enduring together, we’re cultivating endurance in each other, and I love that.

Melissa Kruger
Well, so Courtney, speaking in bridge, you’ve been walking with the Lord for 35 years. She became a Christian at two, cousin 36

Courtney Doctor
years old. That’s when it happened. Why she’s a

Jen Wilkin
Presbyterian. You’re not why you went Presbyterian, it Okay,

Courtney Doctor
those denominational jokes always play. I know. Hey, my mom’s in here, and she won’t come after you. Oh no,

Melissa Kruger
okay. Well, as you look back, what has helped you persevere? Like, as you look back on life, and you say, huh, these things. When I look back in my life, this really helped me persevere. You’ve been walking for 35 years with the Lord. Praise

Courtney Doctor
God, praise God. I want to answer that, but then I also want to say to anybody here who’s feeling like right now you’re not enduring and you’re not persevering, and you are barely holding on by a thread. I want to say that this idea of endurance to the end, that verdict doesn’t come until the end. Your doubts and your fears and your waverings and your questions and your struggles, they don’t mean you’re not going to endure. So I just want to hold that out there, but then as we have means of grace, and have, as we have things that help us endure, I think one of the greatest things that has cultivated endurance with me, and I’m not just saying this, but gospel friends like, like the idea that, because the women up here right now, I mean, they will call me out, you know, it’s not just like, oh, hey, you look so cute today. I like your shoes. You know, it’s a.. there will be a rebuke if there needs to be a rebuke. There will be a projection for

Jen Wilkin
a haircut. Must be more like, yeah, she need to get in for a little touch up

Courtney Doctor
if I needed it, but I don’t. Where were we? I know. we digress. This is how we endure. We laugh, we laugh, for sure. But friends, gospel friends, I mean, friends who pray for you, friends who pray with you, friends that offer you gospel counsel, who point you back to the Lord and to the word, friends who help you do the hard thing. And then, and then cheer you on when you do. Yeah. So, Jen, what about you? When you’re walking through a trial, how have other believers helped you, like specifically helped you endure? Well,

Jen Wilkin
the people sitting up here have helped me, so I can certainly testify to the truth of what you just said, but I was thinking that Melissa and I were talking last night about how we both have recently been through seasons, you know, like, you’ll know you’ll have a friend, and you’re like, her life is always chaos, like, there’s always some new bad news coming out of her. I think I’m just gonna do this the next time I see her. I feel like that was me last year, and a little into this year too. Like, I’m like, are we done yet? Are we done? Am I done being the headliner in the, in the tragedy department, and I don’t know, we’ll see, we’ll see how 2026 treats us, but Jeff and I seriously got to the end of last year, and we thought, well, this is one of those years where we will know a good year when it comes, and I don’t mean to, I would say that relative to many of you in this room, we have had a low degree of adversity in our lives, but it’s kind of like it all showed up at once last year. We had his mom was diagnosed with cancer in April, and it took a long time – colon cancer took a long time to get her surgery scheduled to kind of figure out what’s going on. She had just turned 81 the healthiest, most fit 81 year old you would ever meet, and of all of the aging parents, the last one we thought would have a health issue. She was also the primary caregiver for his father, who was in late stage dementia. So we were just like, Okay, what are we going to do? How are we going to, and she had given this man such exceptional care that he could have lived to be 95 I mean, he was so well cared for, had a very weak heart. So basically, she scheduled, we got the surgery scheduled for july 15. I remember the date she went into the hospital, she wrote on Pop’s little note board, I’ll be home, you know. We didn’t know how long an 81 year old would need to recover from surgery to remove part of her colon, so we were kind of buckled down for two weeks or so before she might be home. And spent the night with Pop at the house that night. Jeff did, and I was in and out. He called me in the middle of night and asked me to come over, and the next morning, while she was in the hospital recovering from surgery, he died. She hadn’t been away from him in three years, you know. And so we had to call my sister in law and ask her to go into the hospital room and tell my mother in law that she was a widow. I couldn’t, we could not believe it. I mean, we just, why, you know, and and then she came home 48 hours later to an empty house, and so, and had to go through chemo, and all of that in the midst of her grief, and then there were other things, you know, my son and daughter-in-law found out, as they had just given, they had just had their third child be born september 23 This is a happy story, by the way. Sorry, I should have set you up for that a little better. And when, when Baby Teddy was born, Olivia was two and a half, and Jeffrey was one and a half. They’re 11 months apart. The first two, Jeffrey is adopted. And as we’re meeting baby Teddy in the hospital, my son’s phone rings, and there is a full biological sibling due immediately. She was born december 14, so they found themselves with four children under the age of three. So, guys, they needed help. So we have been, and this is to say nothing of the other set of aging parents, who, and all of these are such rich privileges to, and I don’t say that like in a shiny Pollyanna Christiany way. I truly feel so grateful to be able to spend my time in these caregiving roles at this stage of life, but I will tell you, that’s that’s two things.

Jen Wilkin
There were three or four, I’ll just stop right there, and people brought us meals, and people stepped in. It’s not just us helping with those babies. People surrounded my mother-in-law with care. It was all church driven. Like, I’m like, what do people do who aren’t believers, you know? When these things happen, so there was that, and then there was just that, where you’re standing there on a site, you talk about means of grace. We kept going to church, which sounds like a small thing, but you’re standing there on Sunday morning, and you’re singing “Christ is my firm foundation, the rock on which I stand” when everything around me is shaken, and then it says he’s never let me down, and he won’t fail me now. And can I tell you, not everyone who hears that song sung is feeling it. I’ve stood next to the person who’s sobbing through that song, and I know why she can’t sing the lyrics, and she needs me to sing them for her. And that’s what we saw too, was just we had to take a step to go be around everyone else, and then we sung each other toward this hope, right, that not all of us could articulate in the moment. So that’s what I got. So

Melissa Kruger
good,

Nancy Guthrie
that’s beautifully said. It so it’s one thing to endure through difficulty, and maybe that’s what we think most of the week, because we, because we know that difficulty can generate doubt and fear, disappointment with God, but don’t you think there’s also something to enduring in the faith when everything’s great, when you know the bank account is going up,

Melissa Kruger
and opportunities are coming, or you know, or just through really good, easy times, or success. Melissa, what do you think about that? Yeah, I think it’s the time that’s so dangerous that we don’t even know it. I think we can be a lot like Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel, and we start sitting back, and we say, well, look at all I’ve done. Look at my kingdom. You know, I was really smart in that business investment, and that’s why we have what we have. You must not have been like we start seeing the fruit as being born because we did. Something, and you know, and I think we’ve all had this, right? Like, sometimes you have to endure things not going well, and what you trust in is okay. I, you know, I brought it to you, Lord, and if you don’t make it grow, it can’t grow. You can’t, we say that to each other, or whatever, but it also means that if he did make it, did make something grow, we should always be so thankful for him, you know that God did this, and I think one of the hardest disciplines when we are in plenty is to continue the act of thankfulness, you know, just to, just to say, oh, I’m in this season, well, how can I turn my eyes and see my sister, who is part of my very body, that’s how that’s how we’re described. I am. We are being built into a temple. I mean, the language that describes us, that is then my opportunity to take my season of prosperity, so to speak, and say, Who can I look around and serve? You know, but we have Nebuchadnezzar saying, look at what my hand, and you know what happened two seconds later, he’s like eating grass, like you know, like a cattle, and then, and I want to say this, that’s God’s grace to him, because when he comes out of it, what does he say? God is king, I am not. And so I think the thing we have to be really careful about in prosperity is thinking I am king of my life, and I made all this happen, and that’s, that’s dangerous. Suffering is actually, I actually think much less dangerous than that. That’s my thought. Any other thoughts on that one? Prosperity.

Nancy Guthrie
Well, I would just say also, when things are good, we can easily become less dependent.

Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah.

Nancy Guthrie
Which I think about the line in the Lord’s Prayer that He wants us to come to Him every day, give me this daily bread, and He’s teaching us how to pray, because I mean, you know, we’re spoken to His women like we’re supposed to be so strong in independence, and God values dependence, it goes against everything in our culture to be dependent, and it’s yet what God values, and so when things are going strong, I mean the truth is I pray less,

Melissa Kruger
yeah,

Jen Wilkin
yeah, that’s

Melissa Kruger
right, that’s right,

Nancy Guthrie
and so, which, which demonstrates less dependence, which is part of persevering, is actually remaining very dependent.

Melissa Kruger
That’s right, that’s right. Well, one thing that can be, I think, really discouraging to all of our faith is when we see Christian leaders, Christian heroes not enter. Yeah, and I mean we’ve seen this a lot in the church today. What are you

Jen Wilkin
talking about?

Speaker 1
Oh, okay.

Melissa Kruger
There’s this thing called Twitter. Do you want me to introduce Shooter? You can find out all the things about it, and, but I think what it can do to us is we can say, if they couldn’t endure, how on earth am I supposed to endure? So, what hope can we take, Jen? Direct it to you. When we see Christian leaders fail, how do we still endure? Like, how do we say no, you know, the Lord has me in this? Or what? What do we even do when we see them fail? What kind of warning is it for us too?

Jen Wilkin
Well, I do want to say, I think that you know this will not surprise anyone. We live in a cynical age, and cynicism is the favorite flavor for most of us, in terms of even if we’re starting to see it shift. If you think about the popularity of the office, a lot of people loved the office, it’s a very cynical show, and now you’re seeing things come out that are just sort of wholehearted, like if you saw Project Hail Mary, that’s an example of like where he’s just a good guy, he’s not a, he’s not a complete, completely uncomplicated character, but he’s just a good guy, and so our appetite for cynicism has felt like it has known no bounds, and cynicism can, for one thing, can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Low culture of low expectations often produces people who meet low expectations, but on top of that, it feeds confirmation bias, and what I mean by that is when the cynical thing happened, the thing that causes cynicism happens. Then we go see, this is how it always goes, and it’s kind of like when all you read are the headlines about murder statistics, but you don’t realize that in your own town those statistics are really low, right? You start to perceive the world to be a dangerous place, whether it really is or not, based on what you’re taking in, and I think that we see that in Christian subculture, the stories about failures are stickier content than the stories about faithfulness, and the stories about faithfulness abound, mm. Hmm, and they’re not told, and so one of the things that I think we should do is tell more of the faithful stories. In fact, it comes to mind, Nancy’s gonna hate this, but I don’t know if you guys saw the article that Sarah put up about Nancy, because guess what, faithful ministry across over 30 years, and, and yet, what do we typically focus on? You know, the most recent, whatever, the watch bloggers got a hold of, and those stories I truly believe, because when I read the Kingdom parables, this is what they’re telling me: those stories are the minority report, and if we allow them to feel like the majority report in our heads, then we’re believing something that’s not true, and we’re subscribing to the flavor of the day, which is cynicism, and cynicism ought not to be found among the children of God.

Courtney Doctor
And can I just add on that, as I’m even thinking, like this whole endurance in the faith, and kind of what you even started with, and you know, we read, you know, you have to go to Hebrews 12. This idea of, you know, therefore, since we have, we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us. Let us lay aside every hindrance in the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. And then, you know, for the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross, despising the shame, and he sat down at the right hand, and we think about this, and we think about all the faithful people who have gone before us. That’s kind of what you were talking about, but here’s the reality. If you’re here today, or you’re listening to this podcast at some future date, and you’re thinking, you know what, just forget it, I’m just going to walk away in the same way that your sanctification helps the people around you, your sanctification strengthens your church, your sanctification strengthens your friends, your sanctification strengthens your family. Well, in the same way your endurance, you are going to be the faithful cloud of witnesses for others. Your story matters, and your endurance matters, and so I’m just even thinking, like, as we’re looking for examples, and how the good examples need to be told, because there are so many who have faithfully endured, and they do, I mean, when you read biographies, it just instills so much confidence in, like, I’m like, yeah, we can do this, when you read some of these, and things that people have gone through, and you know, I know how long ago we published that 12 faithful women and 12 faithful men. I mean, that is, if you just want some summer reading, or you want your kids, or your, your group to read, I mean, 12 stories of faithful men or faithful women, that will cultivate endurance in you, because one day we are going to be the cloud of witnesses, and may it be so of every one of us in this room that we laid aside every hindrance in the sin that so easily ensnares us, and that we run with endurance.

Jen Wilkin
Well, and we’ve been in this weird moment, like with social media and platforms and everything, where we projected onto people who had platforms omni competence and sort of like imperviousness to we made them super human and that’s not your fault, I mean that’s what the platforms do, but I think we’re having a reckoning with how we think about people in any place of attention, right? People who receive more attention than average, so there’s been a learning curve around that, that you guys are trying to survive right now, and so when I say we shouldn’t feel cynical, I want to just confess my own cynicism has come up at many, many, many points, but to carry around a lot of chagrin about a person with a platform who you don’t know is at some point becomes a waste of your time, who in your local church is serving faithfully? Who do you know that you know that you know now? I also know there are people in this room who’ve had people like that, who let them down, and that’s when I think, you know, I’m going to teach on, like, the story of David, where it’s like we want him to be something that he wasn’t, but what he was was enough, you know, in the.. and I don’t mean like he earned his salvation, but you know what I’m saying, his story, his whole story counted toward the verdict of what he contributed to the kingdom, and the thing with these, these online crash and burns is we never hear the rest of the story, and that’s okay. We actually probably shouldn’t have heard the first part of the story, but we’re in a weird, weird time, so anytime you start to feel yourself potentially turning loose of your faith because of someone you know at a distance. The best antidote for that is to get in closer contact with the people who you know up close and to enter to walk faithfully with other believers and to encourage one another. Are in your local setting, because they’re the people who will be there for you when you’re walking through the hard thing, and who you can be there for, and you can, you can share courage. I think all the time about how courage needs companions, and that’s what the church does for us.

Melissa Kruger
And you know, when you were just saying that, I think sometimes we feel really foolish. Yes. Why didn’t I see it? Yes. Oh, and I always go back to Judas. Just remember, you know, I mean, when they’re all sitting around at that dinner, and Jesus is like, one of you is gonna betray me, and everybody’s not being like, it’s Jen, it’s like they all

Jen Wilkin
think it’s

Melissa Kruger
them. Yeah, they – every one of them says, and I think this is actually a sign of endurance. You say, is it I, Lord? Self-examination should be me, because we’re actually examining ourselves to see if

Nancy Guthrie
you are in the faith, but by

Melissa Kruger
the grace of God, you know, we would do it, and, but, but I do think he had this outward association with Jesus that they were awful by. I mean, I think about it all the time. He went out with the 72 when they got two by two and they’re doing all these things. He was at every sermon, he was always there, and they didn’t know. So I think we’re tempted to feel like, how did I miss this? It’s really easy to project faithfulness and not have it, and I think it’s actually a good warning for us. Do we have an outer association with Jesus, or do we have inward affection for Him? And so it is a good warning, I think, as we think about, was

Courtney Doctor
it Tim Keller that said, “Don’t confuse spiritual maturity with spiritual giftedness, and I think so often we do that right, like that’s what we kind of do, your point, like we’re looking for that spiritual giftedness, and it’s like don’t assume that the spiritual maturity has matched that, but may it always outpace, may all of our spiritual maturity outpace any of our spiritual giftedness. Had something else I was gonna say, and no, I’ve completely forgotten what it was, but Nancy asked you a question about prayer and enduring in prayer, because that can be one of the hardest places to endure when we have something, especially when it’s something good, and we just keep asking for it, you know, we just are knocking on the door, and when do we know? Like, how do we know? Is it okay to keep praying for something for a long, long, long, long time, or is it okay to just give up on it? Like, what? What do we do when we’re enduring in prayer, and the Lord has just chosen? I, you know, I always say He answers. Sometimes the answer is no, and sometimes the answer is not yet. So, it’s not that he’s not answering, but it’s not the yes that we want. It’s not the answer that we want.

Nancy Guthrie
Well, you say knock, knock, knock, and so we immediately have to think about Jesus, you know, several times, like he, he talked about the widow coming, and you know, encourages her to keep coming, or the house guest that comes in the middle of the night and knocks, and he uses both of those to prompt us to assume the best about God. I think it’s part of what he’s saying, and, and to persevere. I think both of those are persevering, but it’s interesting, as you know, you talk about we use this language, maybe of pray for something, and just even that language, I think, suggests that the way we quite often approach prayer is we’ve decided what here’s going to be the my preferred outcome,

Jen Wilkin
there is a way that seems right onto Jen. Yes,

Nancy Guthrie
so we have this preferred outcome, and so then we vigorously pour ourselves into praying that, and maybe we become a broken record. So I’d kind of like to alter the whole paradigm of that to think about prayer more in terms of I want to pray on something, I want to pray about something, I want to pray into something rather than for something, because that sounds like I’ve decided what it should be, right. And so, so to think about prayer being more, here is this need this desire, and so what I’m going to, going to do, and keep doing is keep talking to you about it, keep bringing it before you, believing that you hear me, and that you’re at work in me, even in the waiting, and that what you kind of goes back to what I said about dependence, right? So the persevering in prayer shows dependence over the long haul, and then I’m asking you to work, and that so that that praying through it and praying setting it before. For him, I think that delights the heart of God, because what it, what it demonstrates is I’m not going to run away with this and just work out my own answer to this, right, and I’m not going to turn to all of the, I mean, my, my tendency can be, you know, strategizing about how to fix things, that’s just kind of my natural things, but as I continue to pray about it. What am I demonstrating? I’m demonstrating God, you are the only

Jen Wilkin
one

Nancy Guthrie
who can bring about what really needs to happen, and I continue to be fully dependent on you and also dependent on your timing, because I’m going to continue to come to you, but you know another thing you said, you know it is that just giving up. If you just, you’ve prayed about something for a while, I would say those things are to stop praying about something. I would not equate, equate with giving up. And specifically, I think about two people in the Bible. How about Jesus in the garden, right? He prays, prays, he prays again, he prays again, and it seems, and the same thing with Paul. Three times I begged the Lord would take it away, and so I think, and in both of those, I don’t, I wouldn’t say they gave up,

Courtney Doctor
right,

Nancy Guthrie
but I think what happened was that that petitioning in prayer, through prayer, became submitting in prayer, that sense in which, okay, I’ve presented it, I think I have his answer,

Courtney Doctor
yeah.

Nancy Guthrie
And so I think now my prayer becomes, you know, give me the grace to live out of what you’re clearly choosing to do or not do, and that’s we

Courtney Doctor
teach in me, right, that’s really the point of prayer, isn’t it? Like, the point of prayer is not to

Nancy Guthrie
get what we want, the point of prayer is to submit to what He wants and welcome what He wants and invite Him to work in us as we wait for Him to work out His plans for us and for the whole world, and so yeah, you might decide I’m going to stop asking for this, because I sense he’s calling a new me to submit that I have my answer, but that doesn’t mean I’m giving up.

Courtney Doctor
That’s so good. Yeah,

Jen Wilkin
that’s really good.

Courtney Doctor
Yeah,

Jen Wilkin
okay. I have a question that I feel safe asking you guys, because I know that you’re gonna know the context for how you’re gonna respond to this question. Is there a verse or passage that you go to that is particularly helpful to you that ministers to you when you are striving to endure?

Melissa Kruger
Absolutely. Okay. Well, you are enthusiastic, so let’s start with Nancy. Nancy can get first.

Nancy Guthrie
Sometimes, like, I kind of don’t want to look at anybody in the audience right now, because I’m about to say something, and they’re gonna think, “Yeah, she did that to me. Okay, she did that to me. And that is, I, what I mean, is so often when I’m interacting with someone who has a deep need, I go to the same passage over and over again, and I’ve even just mentioned it, and it was Jesus’s response to Paul when three times he begged to have the thorn, whatever it is, taken away, and the answer he gets is Jesus speaking to him, not saying, “Yeah, I’m going to take care of that for you. I mean, I tend to think Paul didn’t really appreciate the answer, necessarily, because I don’t think, and maybe the reason I think that is because I think that’s not always the answer that I’m really hoping for, which is Jesus’s answer is, “My grace is sufficient, my power is made perfect in weakness, and so Jesus is saying to him, I am going to be, I’m going to supply everything you need to endure the pain that I’m not going to take away, and so I think for a long time in my life, when I would look at this verse, I would always think at first it sounds a little bit like Jesus is patting him on the head, like he’s just saying some kind of religiousy talk, my grace is sufficient, but I think not until you’ve been in just the lowest place and you’ve begged him to work, and then you hear him say, you know what, I’m going to be enough for you in this, I’m going to get everything you need to endure this, and I’m going to give it to you in the form and in the timing and in the quantity in which you need it, it just likes it becomes. So significant, so big, so that’s my go-to,

Melissa Kruger
and you can come with that to me at any point. I think I would say the thing that just popped to mind, it’s Isaiah, I think it’s Isaiah 5811 it’s the Lord will guide you continually, and He will satisfy your desire in scorched places, and you will be like a well-watered garden whose springs do not fail. Wow, and the fact that He will guide me, so there’s the promise, but then it’s you will satisfy your desire in this scorched place, you think your desire is in the land of plenty, and he says, “I’m actually going to take this scorched place and I’m going to satisfy your desire there, and you in this scorched place, this barren land, you’re going to be a well-watered garden, you know, and you’re not going to fail, and you just hold it, and you say that has to come true, because God said it, I mean, like this, that’s the option, yeah, anyway, so that one, and I hope I gave the right one, I think it’s Hosea 5811

Courtney Doctor
we’ll put it in the show notes. We’ll look it up. Need to be like the need to be like, as the prophet said. Yes, that’s what I did on my Bible content says the Lord. A day is coming. That’s how I passed my Bible content exam. I just kind of made it up. I sounded kind of.. there’s nothing in the Bible against that. So, that’s no.. there’s nothing in the Bible against that. Hey, they thought the answer sounded okay. My, my go-to is Romans 832 that He who gave His own son.. yeah, how will He not also graciously with him, give us all things, and so just to wrestle with that, and to sit with that when it doesn’t seem like he’s giving me all things, it doesn’t seem like he’s giving me that thing that I want, you know, that thing that I’m praying for, but to wrestle with what that really means is he’s going to give me all things that I need, all things that he sees that are good for me, and so if he is withholding something that I think I want, then I have to be able to trust that I don’t need it, or I don’t need it yet, because he is not going to withhold any good thing. He’s the argument in Romans 832 is from the greater to the lesser, it’s like he’s already done this, this thing he’s given you, his own son, why, why would he withhold, and then back to that song, he won’t, he

Speaker 1
won’t,

Courtney Doctor
he won’t, you know, he won’t, so we can sing that, but that’s what I think of when I sing that song, is like he won’t fail me, he won’t, because of Romans 832

Jen Wilkin
we have this joke about that’s alright, he won’t, he can’t, he don’t walk around, we walk around the kid and go, he don’t,

Courtney Doctor
don’t take it from me, Jenna. Like mine is

Jen Wilkin
really mine. Is Jeremiah 2911 I’m kidding. What is happening here right now? It’s okay if that’s yours. I don’t want to mock anyone for who that I just was waiting, and no one said it, it was just hanging out right there. No, I now mine is a little, maybe a little wonky, but when I think you were talking about the scorched places, and I’ve been teaching through Mark, and the tempt we just did, the temptation of Jesus, which is a scorched place in which the Lord shows himself faithful in the time of trial, and the time of trial is also the place of temptation. So, this is where I’m headed with this, right? God doesn’t tempt us, but when we’re tested, we will be tempted to deny Him, to lose, you know, to say He’s not who He said He was. And so, ironically, or maybe tangentially, the verse that I think about the most with regard to endurance is First Corinthians 1013 that He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you can bear, but with the temptation He will provide a way out. And I think what we tell ourselves is there is no way out of this. This temptation is too much this temptation. Why shouldn’t I lose my faith over this, and it’s then that I need to be reminded by the people around me, and by that passage. Nope, there is a way out, and sometimes that way out is often that way out is fellowship with other people and prayer before the Lord.

Melissa Kruger
So humbling, I always find that verse the most humbling, because it’s like you didn’t look for it. What is.. and there’s no temptation that’s not common to man. I know, I know special kind of

Jen Wilkin
big deal. Yeah, I’m very, very like complex.

Melissa Kruger
Okay, well.. Our time, our time is up. We’re over. You have endured to the end. Yes, you have. Oh, and they’re leaving. Okay,

Courtney Doctor
they’re not enduring exactly dinner time, guys.

Melissa Kruger
Really quickly, how many TGC women’s conference, or are we going to do.. yeah. How many TGC women’s conferences have you been to? Nancy, eight six.

Jen Wilkin
What was 2014

Melissa Kruger
You, you’ve been at eight at the first one. Yeah, eight. You came to 12, right? Yeah.

Courtney Doctor
Came at 12. Yeah, came to 12. I

Melissa Kruger
didn’t realize that was so complicated, so we, we hope friends, I can’t do this, I can’t bring it back. Thankfully, we can edit, friends. We hope you’ve been encouraged by this episode of The Deep Dish from the Gospel Coalition. Come to TGC 27 for another live episode of The Deep Dish, because we’re going to be there. Thanks, friends.